Almond(9)
Mom was slim. She wore chestnut-colored eyeliner that made her big, dark, round eyes look even bigger. Her straight seaweed-black hair fell down to her waist, and her lips were always painted red like a vampire’s. I sometimes flipped through her old photo albums and found out that she’d looked the same throughout her adolescence until now almost reaching her forties. Her clothes, her hairstyle, even her face all stayed the same. As if she hadn’t aged a bit, save for growing taller inch by inch. She didn’t like being called rotten wench by Granny, so I gave her a new nickname, unrotting lady. But she only sulked, saying she didn’t like that either.
Granny also didn’t seem to age. Her gray hair turned neither blacker nor whiter, and neither her large body nor the amount of alcohol she drank by the bowlful showed signs of decrease as the years went by.
Every winter solstice, we went up to the rooftop, put a camera on the bricks, and took a family photo. Between Mom the Ageless Vampire and Granny the Giant, I was the only one growing and changing.
*
That year. The year when everything happened. It was winter. A few days before the year’s first snowfall, I found something strange on Mom’s face. I thought short strands of her hair were stuck to her face, so I reached out to take them off. But they weren’t her hair. They were wrinkles. I didn’t know when they’d appeared, those deep and long lines. That was the first time I realized that Mom was getting old.
“Mom, you have wrinkles.”
She beamed at me, which made her wrinkles longer. I tried to picture Mom aging but couldn’t. It was hard to believe.
“The only thing left for me now is to grow old,” she said, her smile gone for some reason. She stared blankly into the distance, then slowly closed her eyes. What would’ve gone on in her mind? Was she imagining herself laughing like an old grandma in her golden years?
But she was wrong. It turned out that she wouldn’t have the chance to age.
16
When Granny washed dishes or wiped the floor, she would hum a random tune, adding her own lyrics.
Corn in summer, sweet potatoes in winter,
Yummy, sweet, tasty, and sugary.
Granny used to sell them to passersby at the Express Bus Terminal when she was younger. She would squat somewhere in front of the entrance. The only luxury that young Granny could afford was to roam around the terminal after work. She was especially enchanted by the decorations on Buddha’s Birthday and Christmas. Rows of lotus lanterns hung outside the terminal from late spring to early summer, and Christmas ornaments adorned it in winter. It was both her workplace and her wonderland. She said she’d wanted those sloppy lotus lanterns and fake Christmas trees so badly. So when she opened a tteokbokki stall with her savings from selling sweet potatoes and steamed corn, the first thing she did was buy pretty lotus lanterns and a miniature Christmas tree. Seasons didn’t matter to her. All year round, lotus lanterns and Christmas ornaments hung side by side over her stall.
Even after Granny closed her store and Mom opened the used-book store, one of Granny’s ironclad rules was to always celebrate Buddha’s Birthday and Christmas.
“No wonder Buddha and Jesus were saints. They made sure to avoid overlapping birthdays for us to enjoy both holidays. But if I had to choose one birthday over the other, my favorite is, of course, Christmas Eve!” said Granny, stroking my hair. Christmas Eve was my birthday.
Every Christmas Eve, we’d eat out to celebrate my birthday. That year, on Christmas Eve, we were getting ready to go out, as usual. It was freezing and damp. The sky was cloudy, and the heavy, moist air seeped into my skin. Why go through all the hassle, it’s just a birthday, I thought to myself, buttoning up my coat. And I really meant it. We shouldn’t have gone out that day.
17
The city was full of crowds. The only difference from other Christmas Eves was that it began to snow right after we got on the bus. There was an endless traffic jam as a radio broadcaster reported that the heavy snowfall would continue the next day, marking the first white Christmas in a decade. As long as I could remember, I’d never had snow on my birthday until that year.
The snow piled up fearfully fast as if it meant to devour the whole city. The once gray city now looked much softer. Maybe because of the view, people on the bus didn’t seem too annoyed by the traffic. Mesmerized, they stared out the window and took pictures with their cell phones.
“I want naengmyeon,” said Granny.
“And hot pork mandu,” Mom followed, smacking her lips.
“And hot soup,” I chimed in. They looked at each other and giggled. It must’ve reminded them of the other day when I had asked why people rarely ate naengmyeon in winter. They probably thought I craved it.
After dozing off on the bus, we got off and walked along Cheonggyecheon stream endlessly. It was a white world. I looked up to see snowflakes rushing down. Mom yelled and stuck her tongue out to taste the snow like a child.
It turned out that the restaurant with a long tradition where Granny had been was no longer there in the corner of the alleyway. By the time the moisture that soaked the hems of our pants crept up and felt cold against our calves, we had finally found another store that Mom had just looked up on her cell phone. It was a franchise restaurant surrounded by rows of coffee shops.
The words “Pyongyang-style Naengmyeon” were on the wall in big letters, and as if to prove it, the cold noodles were so soggy that they broke into pieces as soon as they touched my teeth, and that was not even the worst part. The soup was stale, the big mandus were burned, and the naengmyeon broth tasted like Sprite. Even someone who had naengmyeon for the first time would know it was bad and sloppy. Despite that, Mom and Granny devoured and emptied their dishes. I guess sometimes ambiance can give you appetite more than the actual taste does. That day it was the snow, of course. Granny and Mom were all smiles that day. I put a huge ice cube inside my mouth and rolled it around with my tongue.